The Roar of the Falls: My Journey with Kaya

I tell Kaya I’d like to stay and paint for a while. Kaya nods, and the three of us kneel around the hide. Brown Deer explains she painted it with a fish-egg mixture to make it waterproof first. Speaking Rain says it’s a parfleche. Kaya lays slim sticks in a pattern on the hide. She touches a bone tool to the paint in a shell and begins tracing lines, using the sticks as a guide. Kaya asks me to choose the color for the next section. I dip the tool in the shell filled with green paint and watch as the porous bone soaks up the paint. It spreads perfectly when I stroke it on the hide.

The boys come out of the tepee and explain to me the colors. Red is for sunrise, white is snow and winter. Blue is the sky, and brown is for the earth. Green is for all the things that grow. I finish painting the green triangular section of hide. Kaya says the green paint came from river algae.

Just then, I hear a baby cry out. I can tell something is wrong. I jump to my feet to run off between the tepees. When I see what it is, I cry for Kaya’s help.